


Behind the Screen

by SansaSweetling



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hacker!Willas, More tags/relations/characters to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1877193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SansaSweetling/pseuds/SansaSweetling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alayne Stone shouldn't be so sad.  And she isn't.  She has everything a teenage girl could want.<br/>Sansa Stark, on the other hand?  She doesn't have anything.  Including her boyfriend Willas Tyrell.  But in a world where information is at your fingertips, anything can happen...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

February 1, 2014.  12:01 AM.  Sansa Stark's 16th birthday.

But Sansa Stark was dead, as was the rest of her family.

In her place was Alayne Stone.  And Alayne didn't turn 16 for months.

Alayne lived in a nice house in Northern California with her father Petyr and her stepmother Lysa and her stepbrother Robert, not with her parents and three brothers (five, if you counted Jon and Theon), and little sister in Southern California.  Alayne was a shy girl, only friends with her family and Mya, not one of the most popular girls in her grade.  Alayne was single, and would probably stay that way for a while.  Not dating the most amazing boy to exist, a first year computer student named Willas.

But at least Alayne's family wasn't dead.

Eddard Stark "committed suicide".  Catelyn and Robb were "killed in an accident" at Sansa's uncle's wedding, along with everyone else in the limo hired for the groom's family.  Nobody had seen Bran or Rickon since "the freak school shooting" at the elementary school.  And Arya had gone out with some of her friends one night - and none of them ever returned home.  

The police claimed, coincidences.  They weren't coincidences.  And Petyr had saved Sansa from joining them.  He disguised her as his daughter Alayne and brought her to live with him and his new wife, Sansa's aunt Lysa.  Sansa was thankful, of course. 

But damn, she missed her old life.

Alayne rolled over in her bed, giving up on sleep.  She pulled open her laptop and opened Facebook.  The usual notifications appeared - "Harrold Hardyng wants to be friends!  Mya Stone liked your photo!"  But Alayne was interested in a different account.  Sansa Stark's.

She hadn't had the courage to open her old profile since she let Petyr change the password.  She didn't want to be tempted in to resuming her old life, and risk being found and killed by whoever her father had upset.  But it was her birthday!  She deserved something, didn't she?

Just in case, she found herself connecting to a Virtual Private Network to change her IP address.  Alayne never bothered - what did she have to hide?  But it was a habit ingrained in Sansa, taught to her by the best computer programmer she knew.

A bunch of birthday messages were already on her screen.  She looked at them, sadly, and remembered.

 _Margaery Tyrell said:_ Happy birthday, Sansa, wherever you are.  We miss you. xx 

Margaery, her best friend.  They used to be like sisters.  It was Margaery who she ran too when Joffrey's abuse got to be too much.  It was Margaery who ultimately saved her from him, by seducing him.  "I can handle Joffrey, sweetling," Margaery had assured her when Sansa had fretted, fearing Joffrey's wrath.  "You worry about yourself."  And although Quarterback Joffrey insisted on being with a cheerleader, Margaery fit the bill just as well as Sansa.  

It was Margaery who introduced her to Willas... but Sansa wouldn't think about that.

 _Jeyne Poole said:_ We all miss you Sansa!!!!  Happy birthday!

Jeyne.  She and Jeyne had been close too, even though Jeyne never understood why she was so happy when she and Joffrey broke up.  They would go to parties together, eat lemoncakes and drink tea, watch movies and have sleepovers.  Jeyne had changed, though.  She was dating Ramsay Bolton now - some arrogant prick who the old Jeyne never would have given the time of day.  Sansa didn't know why.  As long as she's happy, though.

She scrolled past the other messages: Tommen Baratheon, Joffrey's much sweeter younger brother; Loras Tyrell, her brief crush; a couple classmates and a friend of her mom's.  But nothing from the person she actually wanted to see. 

It was still early: 12:33 AM, according to her laptop.  Willas wasn't as much of a night owl as her classmates, and when he did stay up late, he preferred programming over surfing the web.  But still, Sansa was disappointed as she disconnected her VPN and closed the laptop.

And Alayne pushed away all of her thoughts as she fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, hi there! *waves* This is my first fanfic that anyone other than me is reading, so I hope you like it. The first couple of chapters will be mostly background, but it will become more complex later on. So, enjoy!


	2. Chapter 2

"Damn it, Willas!" yelled Margaery. "It's almost two pm! Get your ass up!"

Willas groaned. His head was pounding, and the incessant knocking wasn't helping.

"I mean it! I swear to gods, you do not want me to pick the lock!"

He rolled over in bed and groaned again. "Marge…" he moaned, knowing that she wouldn't be able to hear him.

"You asked for it!" A clicking noise, and then Margaery marched in to his apartment, and then his bedroom. "Rise and shine!" She threw the curtains open, letting the sunlight stream in to his room.

"Damn it, Marge." Willas slowly sat up and covered his eyes. "Where'd you even learn how to pick a lock?"

His sister didn't answer. Figured. She began picking up the beer bottles lying all over the floor, tutting every time.

"Gods be good, my geek brother finally gets himself drunk like a normal college student, and this happens."

Willas winced - he had very few memories from the night before, and based on them, wasn't sure he wanted any more.

Margaery sighed and sat down next to him. "Look Will, I get it. I miss her too, alright? She was my best friend. But - "

"She's not fucking past tense!" The words were out of his mouth before he even thought them. His sister raised her hands in defense.

"You kiss Grandmother with that mouth."

"I have been looking for her for two. Fucking. Months. I've done everything I can. I've looked for her, her sister, whatever her father was involved in - I don't care what the police say, no way did Ned Stark kill himself. Sansa hasn't been on Facebook, Tumblr, her email, anything! And, all of her passwords are changed. She wasn't murdered or kidnapped - she planned something. I can't do anything!"

"… You know her passwords?"

"I helped her make them more secure. She offered, Marge. But what else do I even do?"

"Let the police do their jobs?" she joked. They both knew that Jaime Lannister, chief of police, was most likely involved in the disaster that was the Stark Family.

Willas was in no mood for joking.  He was in no mood for anything other than popping some Advil, and getting back to work.  He leaned over to face his dresser and fumbled around, looking for his glasses.  But Margaery stopped him.

"Look, Willas - we're worried about you," she started. Willas groaned - not this again.  "You're barely passing your classes.  You're practically failing your genetics class, Will - you love genetics!  You never go out anymore.  Garlan and Loras say they haven't talked to you in forever.  You've got to stop this."

"I can't!"  Gods, why couldn't she  _see_  that?  It was Sansa.  The girl he loved.  The girl he would die for, easily.  "You'd do the same thing if you could, right?  You saved her from that bastard Joffrey, you were there with her when her whole family died."

"There's a difference between caring for a person and stopping your whole life because of them!" Margaery exploded.  She paused, taking a couple of deep breaths.  "Look, you know that Stanford up north wants you to come for the computer science program, right?  You're one of the best programmers in the country, Will - you could do so much better than this community college nobody's heard of.  You have to move on with your life.  We can go visit it during your Spring Break, and - "

Margaery was still talking, but Willas had stopped listening.  She wanted him to think about colleges now?  How could he be the best programmer in the country if he couldn't even find his own girlfriend?  

"Fine," he said, mainly to shut her up.  "Great.  Sure.  I'll go.  Now go, would you?  I have to shower.  I have a splitting headache."

She nodded, though Willas didn't think she completely trusted him.  She rummaged in her purse until she found a bottle of some generic painkiller, and tossed it at him.  "Best for hangovers."  Willas decided against asking why she knew so much about hangovers, and nodded his thanks.  

After Margaery left, Willas grabbed his glasses and cane and forced himself out of bed.  He didn't go to the bathroom, though, but instead the desk where his laptop lay.  Slowly he opened it, and opened Facebook.  

It took him a good fifteen minutes to force himself to view Sansa's page, and he almost left when he saw her cover photo of the two of them.  How had she been missing for a whole month?  

_Happy birthday, Sansa.  I love you._

He pressed 'Enter', and the message appeared, along with many others.  Taking a deep breath, he allowed himself a small smile.  He briefly considered going to take a shower like he said he would, working on his English essay, debugging the C program he hadn't worked on in a month.  

But only briefly.

Then he grabbed two painkillers and a glass of water, and got to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that took so long! Updates will start getting faster and longer, I just need to get some of the background stuff out of the way first. :P


End file.
